Mexican style rice

I have been wanting to make a Mexican style rice for a while now and finally got around to it. I added a bit more vegetables to it than normally necessary, but I thought that it was very nice and perfectly good as a standalone dish. This dish is made a lot like a rice pilaf, so that the rice cooks with the vegetables and spices and absorbs all the lovely flavours. I added a subtle spiciness to the dish.

Ingredients

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

300 g tomatoes

2 romano peppers

1 can black beans

1 can sweetcorn

Olive oil

Vegetable stock powder

Salt

Chilli flakes

Ground coriander

Ground cumin

1,5 cup brown rice

Tomato purée

Fresh coriander

Sourcream (optional)

Method

Chop the onion, garlic, tomatoes and romano peppers finely and start cooking them in olive oil.

Add the black beans and sweetcorn to the pan followed by the spices and mix for a couple of minutes.

Then also add the rice and cover the mix with water and let simmer until the rice is cooked.

Towards the end add the tomato purée and fresh coriander. Taste the seasoning and add anything that's needed more.

Serve warm with some sourcream on the side or keep it vegan.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Spicy pumpkin soup

I guess it could be too late to post a pumpkin recipe for Halloween now, as everybody has probably already made their plans. I didn't have time to post this earlier, as I was on holiday, but here it is anyway, maybe pumpkin recipes are needed after Halloween too. I know that I will be cooking loads with pumpkins and squashes still this autumn and winter, as I just can't get tired of them.

I have already posted the recipe for this vegan soup here: Thai inspired pumpkin soup. It's my partner's signature dish, with which he tired to win me over many years ago and succeeded. It may not have been the soup alone, but I can't deny that it had something to do with it. 

This time I added some fresh thai basil leaves to the soup to give an extra anisseed type of flavour, but otherwise I followed the originally posted recipe pretty closely. The seasoning was made more to taste and I added the ingredient amounts pretty much randomly. However the result was great and I soon want to make this again!

Have a nice All Hallows' Eve everyone!

Your VegHog

Spicy Veggie Dogs

I'm generally not too keen in replicating meat eaters' favourites as veggie versions, but sometimes I do try to create such dishes. This time I made vegetarian hot dogs, aka veggie dogs, with cheese, spices and a homemade tomato sauce. I can't imagine that a meat version could ever be better than this and I can only wish that some meat eaters would admit that. Of course I personally think that meat never improves things. However I must confess that I have never eaten a hot dog in my life! You might be shocked by this, but it has just been that way, as I already was a vegetarian when such dishes would've been available to me. They are not very typical food in Finland in the countryside. So I'm not sure how authentic today's recipe is, but then again, I'm sure that these were pretty good what comes to veggie dogs. Do you have any experiences with vegetarian hot dogs?

Ingredients

8 submarine rolls

8 vegetarian sausages

1 tsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp smoky firepit rub (consisting of smoked paprika, chipotle chilli and herbs and spices)

200 g grated mature Cheddar

Chilli flakes

Fried onions

Tomato sauce: 1 onion, 1 garlic cloves, 1 tsp olive oil, 200 g plum tomatoes, fresh oregano, tomato purée, salt and pepper.

Method

Make the tomato sauce first. Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil. Add the tomatoes and let simmer. Season with fresh oregano, tomato purée, salt and pepper. Finally purée it all into a smooth sauce.

Fry the vegetarian sausages in the vegetable oil until golden brown. Towards the end, add a sprinkle of the smoky firepit rub and toss the sausages in the pan.

Make a cut into the submarine roll and place the sausage into the roll. Put some grated cheese and chilli flakes on the top.

Bake in the oven at 200 C until the cheese has melted.

Put the fried onions on the top and serve the veggie dog with the tomato sauce (warm or cold depending on preference).

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Moroccan style stew with onion squash, chickpeas and sugarsnap peas

For a change I wanted to combine a squash with more exotic spices, so I came up with this recipe. I want to keep eating seasonal squashes for a long time still, so new ideas are always welcome. In this recipe I used Moroccan style spicing and combined the squash with chickpeas and sugar snap peas. Would Moroccans even use these vegetables? I'm not quite sure, but I have to say that they work with the spices. On the side of the stew I served couscous with almond flakes and a garlicky yogurt sauce to neutralise the spiciness a bit. I liked this dish very much and I'm sure I'll be making similar ones in the future. I also like making a large batch like this, as this is a good dish to take as packed lunch for the next day, or even eat it two days in a row. Feel free to scale the ingredient amounts down, if you don't want to have spare stew or don't have about four eaters.

Ingredients

Stew

100 g dried chickpeas

1 onion squash

240 g sugar snap peas

4 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1 small red chilli

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp ginger powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ras el hanout

500 ml vegetable stock

1 tbsp honey

Couscous

1 cup couscous

50 g almond flakes

½ tsp salt

Yogurt sauce

150 g natural yogurt

1 garlic clove

1 tsp lemon infused olive oil

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight and boil them in generous amount of water for about one hour. You can also use canned and cooked chickpeas, in that case this step is unnecessary.

Prepare the yogurt sauce. Chop the garlic finely and cook it for a couple of minutes in the lemon infused olive oil, but don't let it get brown. Let the garlic cool and mix it with the yogurt. Now the yogurt can rest in the fridge until serving. Lemon juice can also be added to it to taste before serving.

Then you can start making the stew. Peel the onion squash and remove the seeds. Cut it into cubes.

Cut the sugar snap peas in half. This is an optional step, you can also leave them whole, if you prefer.

Chop the shallots, garlic and chilli finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. I only use a little bit of chilli, but use more, if you like hot food.

Add the spices (paprika, ginger powder, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and ras el hanout) and the vegetable stock to the pan, and then also the squash and chickpeas.

Let simmer slowly under lid for about one hour until the squash is cooked soft. Taste the stew a few times when you go along so that you can adjust the spices according to your own taste. Only when I started cooking more, I started tasting the food as I went along, and that's really necessary to get the taste right. That's also the reason why I'm not always so keen giving amounts for spices here, because I think everyone wants to make the dish to their own taste anyway.

After the simmering, add the honey and the sugar snap peas to the stew and let it simmer for further five minutes. Veganise this dish by leaving the honey and the yogurt sauce out.

In the meanwhile also prepare the couscous. First boil two cups of water and take the pan off heat. Add the couscous, salt and almond flakes to the pan and leave them under the lid for about ten minutes.

Serve the stew, couscous and yogurt sauce together and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Spicy beanballs

I make veggie Schnitzel and fritters quite often, but now I thought I'd make vegetable balls. Veggie burgers are everywhere these days (luckily!), but vegetable balls aren't so easy to get in shops or when eating out. So why not make some myself.

I thought of a quite simple recipe for these. Believe me, they are not so much work, as they are oven baked. Black beans seemed like a natural choice as the main ingredient, and then I went a bit frantic and added all kinds of vegetables and spices that I could find in my cupboards, not to forget about cheese. I think these could be made with many different veggies. I really want to make a bean and sweetcorn ones as well. I could also imagine that a potato mash base would be lovely here. This is a dish where you can get really creative!

Ingredients

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 red bell pepper

1 carrot

2 cans black beans

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

½ tsp chilli flakes

½ tsp ground black pepper

150 g emmental

1 egg

1 cup breadcrumbs

Method

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and grate the bell pepper and carrot. The pepper can also be chopped finely.

Cook the shallots in vegetable oil until soft. Then add the garlic and bell pepper. Cook a while until you add the ground cumin, ground coriander and paprika.

Add the black beans and the grated carrot to the pan and let simmer slowly.

Once everything is cooked nicely, season with salt, chilli flakes and ground black pepper. And if needed, add more cumin, coriander or paprika. Let the mix cool.

Grate the emmental and add it to the bean mix with the egg and breadcrumbs. Mix it all into an even dough and slightly mash so that the beans break a little. That will help the balls to stick better together. Add more breadcrumbs if the mix isn't firm enough.

Shape balls from the dough and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake at 200C for about 30-40 minutes until the surface is crispy.

Enjoy with a nice dip and maybe a salad. I had an olive and roasted pepper salad and my Redcurrant and chilli jam with these, and it was quite a nice combination. 

Your VegHog

Sweetcorn and black bean burritos

I spontaneously started craving burritos, so I had to do something about that (well, a day later that is...). As I happened to have black beans in the cupboard I started planning what else could go with them into nice veggie burritos. I chose the ingredients below, mainly black beans, sweetcorn, pepper and tomatoes. Those are always good basics + I got to use loads of my own tomatoes again. I can't promise that these are very authentic burritos, but it's my take on them anyway.

And here's how I made them.

500 g tomatoes

4 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

Slow-cook the above ingredients into a tomato sauce, until the sauce is concentrated and the tomato taste is intense and any excess liquid has evaporated. Simmer at least one hour, mostly with lid on, and stir occasionally. This is quite similar method to my slow-cooked tomato sauce recipe.  

Then continue with the below ingredients.

2 large shallots

1 pointy yellow romano pepper

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp chilli flakes

240 g / 1 can black beans

240 g / 1 can sweetcorn

Chop the shallots finely and the pepper into small cubes. Start cooking them in a separate pan in vegetable oil until they are soft.

Add the seasoning and then the beans and sweetcorn. Cook for about 15 minutes at low heat.

Add the concentrated tomato sauce to the vegetables and stir.

Now your filling is ready for the burritos.

6 soft tortilla wraps

300 g Red Leicester and Cheddar cheese mix grated

Warm the tortilla wraps up and fill them with the sweetcorn and black bean mix and cheese. Wrap them into burritos and enjoy!

I also served a tomato salsa (my recipe here) and plain cottage cheese on the side.  

Have a good weekend!

Your VegHog

Harissa and spelt stew

September is here! I'm quite excited about all the lovely autumn dishes that I can cook now and I hope you are too! I had a small break from posting in the end of last month, but now I'm very motivated to post, cook and eat a lot.

Today I'll start with a savoury and spicy dish just to kick things off for the month. I cooked an autumnal dish with the feel that I really appreciate in this season. I used harissa, which is such a handy thing to have around and it goes oh so well with halloumi. Have a read what a simple dish this is, only a bit of slow-roasting needed.

Ingredients

4 red bell peppers

4 large shallots

2 tbsp olive oil

250 g cherry vine tomatoes

250 g halloumi

1 tsp vegetable oil

4 garlic cloves

1 cup pearled spelt

500 ml vegetable stock

3-4 tsp harissa

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp honey

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp thyme

Method

Chop the peppers and shallots coarsely and brush them with olive oil. Roast at 180C for about 40 minutes and then also add the tomatoes to the dish and roast for further 30 minutes.

Chop the halloumi into cubes and fry the cubes golden brown. Set them to side to wait until later.

Chop the garlic finely and cook it in olive oil. Then add the pearled spelt to the pan, soon followed by the roasted vegetables. Stir and add ground cumin, harissa and half of the vegetable stock to the pan and let simmer under the lid until the spelt is cooked nicely.

Add more vegetable stock when needed. You might not need all of it depending on the moistness of the dish. Season with honey, paprika and thyme and taste, whether more harissa or cumin is needed. Add the halloumi dices and let simmer for further 5 minutes.

Serve warm and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Harissa and honey roasted aubergines with tomato salsa, halloumi and spicy couscous

I wanted to make something different with my special aubergines from France, and this is the spicy dish I came up with. There are several components in this dish that go well together, and I also used my exquisite olive oil from France for the aubergines and the tomato salsa. I cooked this dish before I left to Finland, so sorry for the small delay in posting it.

Here are the ingredients and instructions to each part of this meal.

Tomato salsa:

4 tomatoes

1 small garlic

2 tbsp lemon juice

Black pepper to taste

Salt to taste

1 tbsp olive oil

It was lovely to have something raw and fresh with this dish, and I thought that this tomato salsa suited it perfectly. I combined some French heirloom tomatoes with a few from my own balcony.

Cube the tomatoes and chop the garlic finely. Season them with lemon juice, black pepper, salt and olive oil. Refrigerate for around half an hour to let the flavours blend together.

Roasted aubergines:

2 aubergines

2 tsp harissa

2 tbsp honey

1 tsp olive oil

1 tbsp water

Make the marinade by combining harissa, honey, olive oil and water. Slice the aubergines lengthwise and roast them at 180C for about 40 minutes. Then brush them with the marinade and roast for further 10-15 minutes until the honey starts to caramelise. Turn the aubergine slices during the roasting to achieve an even coating.

Couscous:

1 cup couscous

1 cup water

1 garlic stock cube

1 red onion

1 small bell pepper

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground coriander

Chilli flakes to taste

1 tsp olive oil

Chop the bell pepper, red onion and garlic finely. Cook them in olive oil in a pan until soft. Season them with ground cumin, ground coriander and chilli flakes.

Bring garlic stock (water + garlic stock cube) to boil and remove it from the heat. Add the couscous and the contents of the pan to it and let rest under a lid for about 10 minutes.

Halloumi:

250 g halloumi

Vegetable oil for frying

Just fry long thin strips of halloumi in vegetable oil until golden brown.

Serve all components together and have some lovely red wine with it. Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Vegetarian bean and potato burgers

When I became a vegetarian as a teenager in the mid 1990's, a vegetable burger was a very desirable dish for me. Back then neither in Finland nor in Germany there were very many in the offer, so I had to figure out how to make my own. A bean and potato burger was the very first one I ever tried to make, and I remember to have been very pleased with myself then. Unfortunately I have lost that recipe, but I tried to make an advanced version of those burgers today, and I really think that the result was similar, yet much better, to the burgers back then.

So here's my recipe for vegetarian bean and potato burgers. Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list, most of it is seasoning that's handy to always have around. The burgers take a little bit of dedication to make, but boy, are they worth it!

For the burger patties: (Makes about 10 large patties)

500g potatoes

2 red onions

3 garlic cloves

2tbsp olive oil

400g black beans (1 tin)

200g sweetcorn (1 small tin)

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp ground coriander

1tsp parsley

A dash of grated nutmeg

1tsp chilli flakes

1tsp vegetable stock powder

A few leaves of fresh sage

1tsp salt

½tsp black pepper

2 eggs

1 cup semolina

1 cup breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil for frying

For assembling the burgers:

Ciabatta rolls (or lovely home made buns!)

Cheddar with chilli

Gem lettuce

Peel the potatoes, boil them in water until soft and mash them. Then let the mash cool. While the potatoes are boiling prepare the rest of the Schnitzel mixture. Chop the onions and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Add the beans and sweetcorn to the pan and season with cumin, coriander, parsley, nutmeg, chilli flakes, vegetable stock powder, sage, salt and pepper. Cook until any excess liquid has evaporated and cool the mix.

Once both mixtures have cooled, combine them and stir thoroughly together. After the mixing, let the patty mixture rest in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Then the actual patty making can start. It's best to prepare an assembling line for these, starting from the left: the bowl with the patty mixture (shaping of the patties takes place above the mixture bowl), a deep plate with the beaten eggs, another plate with the semolina and breadcrumbs and finally a hot non-stick pan with generous amount of vegetable oil for frying (the cooking temperature may need adjusting during the cooking). Shape the patties with your hands and roll them in the eggs and the breadcrumbs, and then off to the frying pan they go. Fry the patties on both sides until they are golden brown with a crispy surface.

At some point in between, warm up the buns and cut the lettuce. Then just assemble yourself some nice veggie burgers and enjoy! I served a salad with homemade oven tomatoes on the side and added some chilli Cheddar to the burgers – yummy! 

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Cauliflower and potato curry – Aloo Gobi

I really love vegetarian curry dishes, and today's recipe is a favourite of mine, a basic Aloo Gobi, an Indian style cauliflower and potato curry. I'm not claiming to be an expert in Indian cuisine, or even close, but I like to try. I happen to live close to a good vegetarian Indian restaurant, so out of convenience I rarely need to cook my own curries. This one is fairly easy, so I would encourage you to try to make it too!

Ingredients

400 g potatoes

1 cauliflower

200 g carrots

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

Fresh ginger (similar amount to the garlic)

1-2 small dried chillies

250 g tomatoes

70 g cashew nuts

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves

Naan bread

Either use 1½ tbsp of a ready made Garam Masala spice mix, or make your own with the following instructions:

Garam Masala spice mix

4 tbsps coriander seeds

2½ tbsp cumin seeds

1 tbsp black peppercorns

3-4 large black cardamom pods

¾ tsp cloves

¾ tsp cinnamon

¾ tsp crushed bay leaves

1½ tsp dry ginger (don't toast)

I especially enjoyed making the Garam Masala spice mix.

Toast all the ingredients apart from the ginger powder for a few minutes in a dry, heavy frying pan on a medium heat, until they get slightly darker. Be careful that the pan isn't too hot. After the toasting remove the pods of cardamom, keeping the seeds, and grind the spices together. Add the ginger powder to the mix.

This makes about three times the amount of the spice mix needed for this dish, but I froze the left overs to be used again soon.

Method

Finely chop the tomatoes, shallots, garlic, fresh ginger and chilli. Cube the potatoes, slice the carrots and cut off the cauliflower florets. Coarsely crush the cashew nuts, keeping lots of large bits to add texture.

Cook the shallots, garlic, fresh ginger and chilli with a little vegetable oil in a large pan until soft. Add the Garam Masala to the pan and then the tomatoes.

After a little while add the cashew nuts, potatoes, cauliflower and carrots and simmer under the lid until the vegetables are fully cooked and the spices have developed their flavours nicely. Add small amounts of water to the pan when needed. That will make the potatoes cook quicker. However try not to rush this dish as it's nicer after a longer simmering.

Season the curry with turmeric and fresh coriander leaves. Serve with warm naan bread, or you could also pair it with some rice.

Your VegHog

Chickpea tagine

Unfortunately I don't own a tagine (maybe one day!), but I still attempted to make a tagine style dish in my large cast iron pan and it turned out fine. Are there any tagine owners among my readers? What are your experiences of them?

Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list as all of these spices are very versatile for all kinds of dishes, so it pays off having them around. You could use a pre-made Ras el hanout spice mix instead of all the individual spices. Also the stages of making this dish are simple, it's only important to keep tasting the dish and add the spices to your own taste. I'm slowly getting more comfortable with a wider selection of spices and like experimenting with them. Preserved lemons might be difficult to get, but they add citrus zing and saltiness.

Ingredients

150g dried chickpeas

7 small shallots

1 sweet potato

2 carrots

2 romano peppers

3 cloves of garlic

1 small chilli

1tbsp olive oil

1tbsp vegetable stock powder + 300ml water

2 preserved lemons

100g black olives

1tbsp honey

Pinch of dried rose petals

For the spices I used:

1,5tsp ground cumin

0,5tsp ground coriander

1tsp ginger powder

0,5tsp ground cinnamon

2tsp paprika

0,5tsp turmeric

0,5tsp grated nutmeg

4 stamen of saffron

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight and then boil for about one hour.

Chop the vegetables (shallots, sweet potato, carrots, peppers and garlic) into small pieces. Sweat the onions in olive oil and then fry all the vegetables for a few minutes, then add the spices to the pan.

Prepare the vegetable stock and add it to the pan. Add the drained chickpeas and cook under lid for about one hour. Cooking under the lid keeps the steam in the dish, which ensures the vegetables cook evenly and at least partly makes up for not having a proper tagine.

Later add the chopped preserved lemons, honey and whole black olives to the mix and cook a while longer. There's no need to rush this dish!

Once you're happy with the taste, serve on its own as a stew or with couscous. Sprinkle some rose petals on the top for serving.

Your VegHog